White feminism has existed for centuries and continues to disenfranchise the experiences of women of color. Whether it be through silencing women of color by belittlement, arrogance, or usurping of power, white feminism continues to mute voices that do not specifically cater to white issues or that might make the lofty goals of feminism more difficult.

Ruth Frankenberg

Sanders

The power structures between black and white suffragists in the 20th century are still influencing how politicians view race and how certain subjects are able to gain leverage and others are disregarded completely.

According to the New York Times, he “struggled to prioritize and execute a winning plan to build their [black voters’] support

Bernie Sanders, a 2016 presidential candidate, completely neglected black voters while campaigning.

While the problems to which feminism are geared have changed significantly since the early 20th century, the racial power structures at play are still very much the same.

This disenfranchisement led to the creation of a movement that was implicitly limited to the white and wealthy—women who could campaign, fundraise, instill change, and bring consistency and reliability to the movement.

Even

(Holloway)

.

One of the most well-known 21st century feminist movements is the Women’s March.

While Warren was able to legitimize both her and others’ Native American voices, she did so through a cloud of whiteness that disregarded true Native American adversity (Osterheldt)

Warren decided to confront her issues with President Donald Trump’s attack of her supposed Native American ancestry by taking a DNA test that proved she was, to some very small extent, Native American

ournalist Jeneé Osterheldt uses

how it impacts communities beyond just women of color.

although rarely intentional

Current movements, such as the Women’s March, have sought to empower women and bring justice to marginalized communities

often appears to promote the rights of all women, regardless of their race

After analyzing real world examples of the ‘problematic’ existence of the African-American youth demographic in postmodern American society, as well as examining the work of multiple experts on the topic of adultification as well as in the fields of psychology and sociology, with the information presented, it would be remiss to deny the large extent to which African-American youths are detrimentally affected by adultification in postmodern America including by hyper-penilization and sexualization.

The research of Professor Philip Goff of the University of London also provides indispensable information regarding the detrimental effects of adultification, specifically in relation to criminality. In an excerpt taken from Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood Epstein, Gonzalez and Blake state, Professor Philip Goff and colleagues published an experimental study demonstrating that from the age of 10, Black boys are perceived as older and more likely to be guilty than their white peers, and that police violence against them is more justified.19 Even seasoned police officers sampled in the study consistently overestimated the age of Black adolescent felony suspects by approximately 4.5 years (Epstein et al 4).

A look at the increasing amount of academic literature being released regarding the detrimental effects of the adultification of the African-American youth demographic also provides a lucid insight into the extent of these detrimental effects.

n light of this information the reader is provided with yet another case where the adultification of a member of the African-American youth demographic resulted in detrimental consequences for the black youth.

This compelling information from the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality coupled with the details of the case provided by the Washington Post perhaps reveal the real motivations behind officer Casey’s conduct that afternoon.

Within these descriptions from the Washington Post the reader sees that again, something about the appearance of the victim incurred negative repercussions.

According to the article there was no evidence that officer Casebolt was ever in imminent danger, nor were there any signs of visible injuries or bruising which would indicate that Casebolt was justified in using excessive force

A

Rice’s adultification resulted in his death

adultification

His alleged appearance as a twenty something year old male increased his credibility as a threat as a twenty-something year old male intending harm with a gun presents a much higher security risk than a prepubescent boy pretending to shoot strangers with a toy gun.

O

Although Smith’s activity only ended in a lesson learned as a result of a stern word from his father, many other members of the African-American youth demographic in similar situations did not endure such an innocuous fate.

Not only does this data verify the existence of the detrimental effects of adultification for members of the African-American youth demographic, it highlights one of the major forms which these detrimental effects take, police violence.

endure

What Smith’s father is attempting to teach him about is the existing tendency of American society to absolve African-American youths of their innocence, especially in cases involving or possibly involving criminal activity.

absolve

A

attempting

In

An examination of real word examples of the adultification of African-American youths and its effects on the African-American youth demographic provides empirical evidence which supports the claim that the African-American youth demographic is to a large extent negatively affected by adultification in American society.

By critically inspecting the work of some of the prevailing experts on this topic including the Georgetown School of Law, Michael J. Dumas, Joseph Derrick Nelson, Phillip Attiba Goff, Vanessa Williams, Matthew Christian Jackson and others as well as by examining real world examples, it becomes apparent that to a large extent the adultification of African-American youths in post-modern American society has multiple detrimental effects on the African-American youth demographic including hyper-penilization and sexualization.

One of these inescapable questions is, to what extent is the African-American youth demographic negatively affected by adultification in post-modern American society?

The experience described in the poem, as well as an increasing quantity of recently published literature regarding the effects of adultification on the disproportionate penilization and sexualization of African-American youth in post-modern American society all raise a multitude of cogent questions.

T

illustrates

adultification

American

non-Afro

African-Americans

Assignment #1 Draft #2

The seconds long clip in the Gillette advertisement underscores a huge social problem facing the United States. Criminalizing abortion is a way of silencing women, maintaining the dominance of the white male demographic, and perpetuating racial and economic inequality. By taking away reproductive rights, women become incubators instead of people. While abortion is currently protected by Roe v. Wade, campaigns to overturn it in addition to other laws such as Alabama’s Personhood laws show that this basic right is threatened. It is crucial to recognize the destructive safety and social implications of making abortion illegal.

On a basic level, abortion rights are about power dynamics and equality between men and women, but when examined more closely, it is also an issue of racial and economic injustice.

Even if the Bible explicitly stated abortion is wrong, it should have no bearing on the formation of laws in the United States. In theory, separation of church and state keeps religion from dictating law. The only reason criminalizing abortion related to the church is entertained seriously by the government is because it is promoted by individuals of Christian religions. If laws were suggested based on Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or another religion, it would likely be shot down as a conflict with separation between church and state. Separation of church and state only applies to non-Christian religions. One person’s religion should not govern the body of another.

His book, Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice

This socioeconomic and racial injustice cause by inaccessible abortions in the early to mid 20th century was apparent to some

Women of lower socioeconomic status had less access to safe illegal abortions.

These racialized differences have a combination of causes

Women of color had four times as many abortion-related deaths compared to white women.

Despite the risks, some facilities provided safe illegal abortions, but they come at a cost.

s.

Illegal abortions cannot be regulated, while legal abortions happen in sterile environments with qualified staff that must obey laws and regulations that protect patients.

Criminalizing abortion does not always “save” babies in the way some people intend, it instead means safe conditions are not attainable for most people

While this is currently overridden by Roe v. Wade, if it is ever repealed, abortion would be illegal, and there would be other less-publicized ramifications

D

Incubation takes top priority.

By being unable to choose to have an abortion, it takes away free will and therefore personhood, and conveys that the woman’s role as a mother is more important than any reason she could want an abortion,  perpetuating social values of women solely as mothers

Ta

Giving a fetus equal rights as its mother ultimately takes away her personhood, equating her to an incubator.

When reproductive rights are limited, the right to make choices for oneself is taken away, thus stripping women of personhood.

Acce

It is important to note that while referred to as women in this essay, the issues discussed can apply to all people that identify as women, regardless of their sex organs, and reproductive rights do apply to all those that do not identify as women but have female sex organs (i.e. agender, transgender male without reassignment surgery, etc.).

Pro-life sentiments strip women of their personhood, disproportionately affect people of color and of low socioeconomic status, and inaccurately cite religion in order to fulfill their own agenda.

and revocation of reproductive and abortion rights

W

This interaction is silencing and asserts male power.

By attempting to “translate” for the woman, he is conveying that what she has to say is not valid until it passes through the lips of the white man.

The Rwandan genocide is one of the most misunderstood massacres of the modern era. According to the BBC, despite some foreign involvement, issues with understanding what was happening because of the complex racial, political, and colonial tensions led to little being done by organizations like the United Nations. Today, the continued lack of knowledge on the genocide has led to its problematic portrayal in literature, particularly by new scholars, and the widespread misunderstanding of the Rwandan people and culture.

While there were fewer victims in the Rwandan genocide

Uvin states that this argument completely forgets the input from actual Rwandans and exists purely to complement the preexisting belief that the genocide was a purely internal fault and that it occurred simply because “obedience is a fixed quality of Rwandan culture” (84).

“new” scholars tend to have adopted only the basic social-constructivist interpretation of events in which the racial and political divides existed far before colonial intervention

Peter Uvin caustically describes how “it is interesting to see all the young Ph.D. candidates from good American and Eur

white countries, such as France and the United Kingdom

According to author Noam Schimmel, the inherent and historical racism possessed by foreign aid workers in Rwanda—and the validation of the Hutu prejudices against Tutsi people by cultured Whites—culminated in the genocide (408

patrons

After reviewing the work of multiple leading sociologists and psychologists, as well as analyzing recent data and information from current news sources , it would be remiss to deny the existence of workplace inequity in post-modern America and the detrimental effects it has had on the African-American population. An ever-increasing wage gap, discriminatory hiring tendencies, the continued over and under representation of African Americans in  the service and labor sector as well as in the managerial and executive sector respectively, represent only a small portion of the constantly increasing database of information and statistics which corroborate this claim. Action to remedy this must be implemented in order to continue to move towards a ‘post-partisan’, ‘post-racial’ society.

Averhart, Bigler and Liben’s data provides compelling evidence that workplace inequity in post-modern America still drastically and detrimentally affects African Americans. Marked differences in the presence of African American ve

“Though the colored man is no longer subject to be bought and sold, he is still surrounded by an adverse sentiment which fetters all his movements.

oxic masculinity practices, especially in creating a stigma around emotional intimacy and vulnerability in men has created dangerous psychological effects. In addition, research has shown that in our own society and in our own homes we incite these unrealistic expectations for men to live up to. It is important to recognize that while the patriarchy bestows privilege upon men, it also constrains them to live within the features that traditional masculinity concepts has elevated as masculine. Perhaps the bigger picture that should be gained here is understanding that until we as a society become more aware of how this feature of toxic masculinity effects a majority of our population, we will be no closer to solving the issues of gender inequalities and gender stigma.

But for now, I am going to reflect on my own personal anecdotal experiences with toxic masculinity and gender inequality.

In the case of expressing emotions, a man might be condemned or branded with titles like “sissy” for simply conveying something that is inherently natural to humans but disruptive to the concept of “masculine characteristics”. The standards and requirements that toxic masculinity reinforces causes detrimental psychological effects (American Psychological Association, Boys and Men Guidelines Group, 2018)

While the Gillette ad didn’t directly allude to the emasculating undertone of male vulnerability, I found the scene of a little boy crying while being comforted by a woman significant.

The most recent Gillette ad demonstrates the adverse effects toxic masculinity injects in U.S. society. The video also reflects on how traditional gender norms can be reframed to make progress towards gender equality, gender stereotypes and double standards.

In better familiarizing the public about both who is affected by mass incarceration and what the consequences of the social issue are, the public can build its understanding of the world around while also giving a voice to the voiceless and those rendered at a disadvantage due to society’s processes. Furthermore, understanding such struggle opens the door for those informed individuals to approach injustice with a forceful vengeance in order to improve society past the status quo.

on

black and latino

Inequality has plagued society since its very beginning as slavery, marginalization, and segregation have deeply rooted themselves in the history of mankind.

Unequal Labor Force

Women face many challenges that men may not ever have to face when it comes to issues such as job availability and annual pay.

On a basic level, abortion rights are about power dynamics and equality between men and women, but when examined more closely, it is also an issue of racial and economic injustice. Criminalizing abortion is a way of silencing women, maintaining the dominance of the white male demographic. By taking away reproductive rights, women become incubators instead of people. In the current political climate, there is the threat of eliminating reproductive rights. Individual states are passing laws that will take effect if Roe vs. Wade is overturned, and some states have laws that do not conflict with Roe v. Wade but limit abortion and reproductive rights.

Even if the Bible explicitly stated abortion is wrong, it should have no bearing on the formation of laws in the United States. The only reason this law based on religion is entertained seriously by the government is because it is promoted by individuals of Christian religions. If laws were suggested based on Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or another religion, it would likely be shot down as a conflict with separation between church and state. Separation of church and state only applies to non-Christian religions. One person’s religion should not govern the body of another.

Dr. Parker even stated that the association between religion and pro-life was not even established until the 1980s.

While the decision to terminate a pregnancy regardless of legality can cause emotional distress, adding the factor of criminality to the equation produces even more stress for the patient

Criminalizing abortion does not always “save” babies in the way some people intend, it instead just means safe conditions ar

These rules treat women more as a commodity rather than a person, with such specific limitations on their freedoms.

Personhood laws make it so that when the fetus’s rights and the mother’s rights are at odds, the fetus’s rights will take priority. Taking away reproductive rights conveys the message that women do not have decisional capability, as the choice has already been made for them by predominantly male lawmakers. By being unable to choose to terminate a pregnancy, it takes away free will and therefore personhood, and conveys that the woman’s role as a mother is more important than any reason she could want an abortion.

Pro-li

It is important to note that while referred to as women in this essay, the issues discussed apply to all people with female reproductive organs regardless of their gender identity.

s

violent.

These are only a few cases of Black girls being arrested at a young age

These controlling images of Black girls influence people’s perception of them, from the very beginning. They are held to a different standard in school. Misinterpretations of Black girls often revolve around their tone or the association that’s made of Black girls being violence

Controlling images of Black girls have affected their everyday life, especially in school.

In another school, a girl accidently pushed another student in the hallway and was tasered by a police officer. A simple mistake by a Black girl can lead to sheer violence by authorities due to the belief that she may be committing a ‘violent’ act. She was then arrested and faced charges of battery on a security resource office, disrupting a school function and resisting with violence[3]. The girl reacted in self-defense. Children should not be arrested for such minor mistakes. All these examples show that the zero-tolerance policy is brutal – the most innocent mistake made by a children can be blown up by school authorities and in a blink of an eye, the child can end up arrested. It’s important to note that the children who are subjected to this unfair treatment are those who may be different, whether it be race, sexual orientation or learning abilities from their fellow classmates.

Instead of explaining to this student why he shouldn’t have made this comment, they took the easy way out and called authorities.

By removing children from their schools, they end up in juvenile detention centers and ultimately, end up on a path to prison

They

This can be attributed to the school-to-prison pipeline, a systemic approach in which the government places students of color under unfair standards

has

Undocumented immigrant populations are at the mercy of the needs of large meat processing corporations through their labor policies and effects on local communities. Recently, there has been difficulty finding domestic labor for these facilities as unemployment rates are low and the Trump administration has cracked down on immigration, leading to an increasing reliance on undocumented, and unchecked, labor. Workers face a plethora of occupational hazards in the facility and also by living in the surrounding community. Undocumented populations face the brunt of this corporate disparity due to the threat of deportation.  

D

07

Similarly, the entire processing plant has a great deal of contaminated wastewater from the bacteria and animal waste itself

Like most low skill jobs healthcare isn’t included to any of the employees, decreasing the rate at which employees report workplace injuries (Barboza, 2001). 

exclusively limited

Regardless of labor shortages, worker treatment is one of the biggest problems in low-skill industries with a lack of safety measures and incidents remaining significantly unreported.

(Murray, 2013). 

The giants in the industry are aware of the anti-immigration sentiment in local communities and make an effort not to alienate the upper-level unionized workforce.

It is not a coincidence that rural counties with a meat-packing-facilities supported Trump and his anti-immigration policies in the 2016 presidential election.

today

One of the biggest shifts in labor in the late 20th century within the meat processing industry was the shift from white, unionized labor to immigrant ununionized labor.

The presence of meat packaging plants in rural, traditionally white, communities creates a stigma surrounding the presence of migrant immigrant populations.

With recent federal immigration crackdowns and low unemployment rates across the country meat packing giants such as Swift and Tyson have found it difficult to find workers in such a demanding sector.

Questions towards corporations have been raised surrounding worker’s rights, documentation status, and working conditions.

American

huge immigrant labor disparity

within

The United States is seen as such a progressive nation

private area

The age of mass incarceration also birthed an era of police brutality and violence

These girls are continuously misinterpreted as violent, aggressive, or out of control.

This incident could have been handled much differently and should have never escalated to an arrest

Many boys that go down that terrible path are subjected to the street-life of “hustling” and selling drugs. The girls that spiral down this road go into prostitution and get “pimped out”

prostitution

Immediately disciplining these children without trying to figure out the root of the problem is automatically labeling them as delinquents, which later turns into labeling them as criminals.

Exclusionary punishments, expulsions and suspensions, inhibits the learning process. The more time spent out of school, the more behind and disengaged these students are compared to other students.

A teacher is supposed to facilitate ambition and help children reach their goals,

This stigma against students of color contributes to a sense of hopelessness and doubtfulness in their abilities

lighter hue

jailtime.[2]

This schema urges the practice of discrimination to be the norm against this demographic

ns.

The society in the United States

these issues significantly impact Black children with the school to prison pipeline and hyper-criminalization of Black girls.

has

ntry

.[1]

The United States has a consistent trend of disproportionately imprisoning people of color, specifically Black Americans.

Assignment 1: First Draft

The claims portraying the Gillette advertisement as offensive towards men, and a scheme to pander to politically correct millennials for capitalistic gain, are invalid and seemingly mean to inhibit progress. If teaching your little girl to say she is strong makes you feel uncomfortable, or you consider it an attack to be told to teach your sons not to be violent towards one another, then you must take a long, hard look at how you perceive gender. Gillette had no intention of slandering their demographic when they made this commercial, because that would be ridiculous. The real purpose was to spread feminist ideals into the minds of men, to tell men that they are capable of bettering the lives of the people around them and their families if they know what gendered injustices are and when they happen. Feminism is both for men and women. Anyone can be hurt by society’s traditional ideals of the masculine and the feminine, and Gillette’s advertisement sought to deliver the message to men of what they can do to solve this issue.

then you must take a long, hard look at how you perceive gender

affliction

Men on the other hand, often think that feminism is not targeted towards them, and therefore traditional masculinity has largely remained untouched and un-criticized until recent.

Women know that traditional femininity is wrong and harmful.

At this point, most women have turned away from this ideal and focus more on building their careers.

was

Most men would probably contest to that.

Women will know that it is virtually always men who do these things

blind

If men find this offensive, then they either do these things and do not want to be told they are bad, or they think that it is a false claim that men do these things at all.

This is not to say that men do this all the time and are evil creatures trying to take women’s voices away, it is just pointing out that this is something that occurs, and men should try to avoid it.

To say that what Gillette is promoting in this advertisement is offensive to men, is to say that toxic masculinity should be accepted and those who suffer from it should continue to suffer

Toxic masculinity is defining manhood and what it is to be a man with sexually aggressive, ‘macho’ traits that men supposedly should aspire to have

The advertisement is hardly even an advertisement, considering their main goal is not to sell you something, they are just trying to get a message across to their mostly male demographic.

If this was a sneaky corporate business strategy, then it majorly backfired

o

it

The message from the old advertisement is ‘use our products and women will be attracted to you’, which is a heteronormative, almost predatory theme. Gillette then directly responds to their past selves with their new message, which is to stick up for women and men. It is almost like Gillette is leading by example and wants their male viewers to own up to how they may have wrongfully dealt with gender in the past.

proves

The intentions behind the commercial were good

The Gillette commercial had a positive message which reached a powerful audience; it was not for capitalistic gain nor was it created to insult men

Some of which include that it was made just for the money in the demographic of progressive millennials or that it is offensive for men

it has still been criticized for a multitude of reasons.

targeted at men,

The attempted erasure and elimiation of Black English reflects racism that is not only thread through our systems of education but also through the strucutre of our society. The Miseducation of young Black children and the insistence on codeswitching reflects a violent assault on Black culture. However resilient, and adaptive codeswitching has proved to be, the necessity and importance of navigating complex interactions has been created through replicated systems of oppression. This oppressive system seeks to only value the the norm, being that of white values, standard English which must be understood, fundamentally as white privilege.

She argues that his ability to codeswitch and maintain composure saved him his life

rable.

black

The violence against Black English in classrooms is described by Joyce King as a form of dysconcious racism in that it ‘accepts the existing order of things’, endorsing the dominant White norms and privileges.

The concept of codeswitching, from pluralism, validates the cultural importance and communicative abilities of Black English, while also insisting that the non-standard dialect is effective only in a given context and that students must speak standard English ‘for the purposes of upward socioeconomic mobility’ (Howard, 1996).

Today, and since the development of AAVE, the ways in which standard English and AAVE interact have replicated systems of oppression that ‘other’ Black bodies and force them to conform to using standard English.

or Black English

‘

Assignment 1

Before long, toxic masculinity will be a thing of the past, but it will take the full effort of everyone to end this horrid cycle.

toxic masculinity does exist and that they should never be afraid to be who they are

they know they are valued members of society

insure

Men have a responsibility to not only to be vocal in their communities, but to also practice being a positive member of that community.

Toxic masculinity must be ended for the sake of the future generations, and in order to do this, words must match actions.

The strongest buildings known to man have crumbled from the smallest of cracks, and the same applies to toxic masculinity